MileagePlus Upgrade Awards

Request an upgrade

You can request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award while booking your flight or after booking your flight.

Request during booking

We encourage all MileagePlus members to request an upgrade while booking to confirm an upgrade right away (if available) and avoid the wait-list process.

When searching for flights, specify that you want upgrade availability displayed in the results by following these steps:

Sign in to the MileagePlus account you want to use to request the MileagePlus Upgrade Award.

On the united.com home page, under the flight search tab of the booking box, click on the “Advanced Search” link.

After entering your flight search criteria on the advanced flight search page, select “MileagePlus Upgrade Award” and select “Price” or “Schedule” under the “Search By” option found in the “How would you like your flight results displayed?” section. Click “Search.”

Select the flight(s) you want to upgrade, and continue.

You will be presented with a list of flight options and an indication of whether a MileagePlus Upgrade Award is available for each flight. Simply select an option that has upgrade availability, and continue with your booking. At checkout you will be prompted to pay for your original booking and provide any applicable miles and co-pay for your MileagePlus Upgrade Award. This process will confirm your upgrade.

If none of the flights in your itinerary have upgrade availability, you can still book that itinerary and later request the upgrade(s) using the steps in the “Request after booking” tab. You will be placed on a waitlist that will be cleared as upgrades become available.

If you are not already signed in to a MileagePlus account, you will be prompted to enter the MileagePlus account information for the account you want to use to make the upgrade request. Continue to complete your request.

Option 3: Request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award by phone

Premier® members can request MileagePlus Upgrade Awards by calling their status-specific service phone numbers. If you are not a Premier member, you can call United Reservations at 1-800-UNITED-1 (1-800-864-8331) to make the request. There is no fee to make an upgrade request by phone for an existing booking.

Option 4: Request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award at the airport

You can request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award starting 24 hours before your departure at most airports by seeing a United check-in counter representative or gate agent.